Muscatine Iowa: Encyclopedia II - Muscatine Iowa - History

Muscatine Iowa - History

Muscatine began as a frontier trading post, founded by Colonel George Davenport. Muscatine was originally called Bloomington when incorporated in 1839, but was changed to reduce mail delivery confusion as there were already too many Bloomingtons in the Midwest. The name "Muscatine" is believed by some to be named after the Muscaoutin native American tribe. Muscatine is the only city in the world by that name.

A button company was founded in 1884 by a German immigrant named J.F. Boepple, producing buttons by punching them out of clam shells harvested from the Mississippi River. Muscatine was known as the "pearl button capital of the world." Hole-punched clam shells can still be found along the riverfront.

From the 1840s to the Civil War, Muscatine had Iowa's largest black community, consisting of fugitive slaves from the South and free blacks who had migrated from the eastern states. One of the most prominent community leaders was Alexander Clark, Sr., a Pennsylvania native, barber and eventually a wealthy timber salesman and real state speculator who helped found the local AME Church, assisted fugitive slaves, and petitioned the state government to overturn racist laws before the war. In 1863, Clark helped organize Iowa's black regiment, the 60th United States Colored Infantry (originally known as the 1st Iowa Infantry, African Descent), though an injury prevented him from serving. In 1868, he successfully desegregated Iowa's public schools by suing the Muscatine school board after his daughter Susan was turned away from her neighborhood learning center. Eleven years later his son Alexander Jr. became the first black graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law, and in fact its first black graduate from any department. Clark Sr. became the second black graduate five years later despite being fifty-eight years old, saying that he wanted to to serve “as an example to young men of his own race.” Clark also rose to prominence in the Republican Party, serving as a delegate to various state and national conventions. In 1890, he was appointed ambassador to Liberia by President Benjamin Harrison. In fact he was one of four Muscatine residents to serve as a diplomatic envoy between 1855 and 1900, a remarkable feat for a town of such small size: George Van Horne was consul at Marseilles, France during the 1860s; Samuel McNutt served at Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1890; and Frank W. Mahin represented his country in Reichenberg, Austria in 1900. Less than a year after arriving in West Africa, however, Clark died of fever. He was laid to rest in Muscatine's Greenwood Cemetery. In 1975 an low-income apartment complex for senior citizens was built on the site of his long-time home and named the Alexander Clark House. The actual home in which he lived towards the end of his life was lifted from its foundation and moved to a new site about two hundred feet away. Today the University of Iowa's chapter of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) is named for the Clarks, two of Muscatine's most famous natives and two of the more prominent black Iowans in history.

Sam Clemens (better known by his pen-name Mark Twain) worked for a while at the local newspaper, the Muscatine Journal, which was partly owned by his brother, Orion Clemens. He made a few recollections of Muscatine in his book Life on the Mississippi.

"And I remember Muscatine--still more pleasantly--for its summer sunsets. I have never seen any, on either side of the ocean, that equaled them. They used the broad smooth river as a canvas, and painted on it every imaginable dream of color, from the mottled daintinesses and delicacies of the opal, all the way up, through cumulative intensities, to blinding purple and crimson conflagrations which were enchanting to the eye, but sharply tried it at the same time. All the Upper Mississippi region has these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle. It is the true Sunset Land: I am sure no other country can show so good a right to the name. The sunrises are also said to be exceedingly fine. I do not know."

His other, less flattering recollection of Muscatine is of being accosted by a lunatic who threatened to kill him if he did not proclaim the man the one and only son of Satan.

Muscatine was home to Norman Baker, a flamboyant entrepreneur, one-time Vaudevillian, radio pioneer and clinic owner who claimed "cancer is curable." Born in Muscatine in 1882, Baker was the son of a German immigrant and inventor. He went on to travel in Vaudeville with his psychic assistant, Madame Pearl Tangley (portrayed by two different women). He married the second Madame Pearl, Theresa Pinder, and in 1914 returned to Muscatine, where he and his wife's father perfected the air-powered calliope, called the Tangley Caliaphone. In 1925, he founded KTNT radio (later known by the catch phrase, "Know the Naked Truth"). On the station, Baker presented local talent, Tangley Calliaphone concerts, and the "first radio wedding." Baker testified at hearings presided over by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, born in nearby West Branch, Iowa, as the government innaugurated the Federal Radio Commission (later the Federal Communications Commission). Among other proposals, Baker wanted all network radio stations to broadcast on the same frequency. He went on to found the Baker Institute, where, with help of noted cancer quack Harry Hoxsey, he claimed to have cured cancer. He held a number of outdoor rallies to promote his cure. Due to investigations by the American Medical Association and the Federal Radio Commission, he was forced out of Muscatine begining in 1931. He moved his radio station to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he could blast the U.S. with 100,000 watts, and his clinic to Eureka Springs, Arkansas. In 1940, he was convicted of mail fraud and spent four years in jail. He died in Florida in 1958.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki